Hand-to-hand combat

Michigan, Wisconsin not quite spittin' over mitten, but both say image is fittin'. Meanwhile, what about Illinois?

December 09, 2011|By John Keilman, Chicago Tribune reporter

Illinois' neighbors to the north are smitten with the idea of the mitten.

Wisconsin and Michigan have gotten into a savage blood feud — OK, more like a polite, Midwesternish discussion — over which state is most shaped like the be-thumbed hand warmer. It started Tuesday, after Michigan booster Alex Beaton noticed that the Wisconsin Department of Tourism had appropriated the mitten for a seasonal campaign.

"I was flabbergasted," said Beaton, 23, a marketing professional from Grand Rapids who runs a Michigan-centric website called AwesomeMitten.com. "I had no idea that Wisconsin thought it was a mitten."

She said her state's residents often hold up a hand when they're asked where they're from — two hands if they want to include the Upper Peninsula (a Traverse City clothing company called High Five Threads uses the two-hand gesture in its logo, she noted).

Beaton issued a gently mocking tweet and within hours the blogosphere and media ran wild, stoking the flames of this heretofore unnoticed conflict.

Wisconsin tourism official Lisa Marshall said the mitten followed other images shaped like the state — a hunk of ice, a grassy field, a leaf — that the department used in promotions this year. Wisconsinites have also long used the mitten metaphor, she insisted, highlighting a 1992 political commercial in which then-Senate candidate Russ Feingold pointed out his campaign destinations on the back of his hand.

Still, she tried to take the high road.

"Michigan, they can be the Mitten State," she said. "That's not our brand. We want Chicago people to think of us as the state for fun vacations."

As for Illinois, the state has yet to try any shape-related marketing campaigns, but Jan Kostner of the Office of Tourism said she would pose the question on the Enjoy Illinois Facebook page.

Maybe you can help. Send your ideas of the shape Illinois most resembles to thetalk@tribune.com. You could inspire an entirely new image for the Land of Lincoln — unless, of course, those copycats in Indiana steal it first.